Predator: Badlands is a huge hit. One of the most critically acclaimed entries in the nearly four-decade-old franchise, it’s also opened the biggest box office in the history of Predator movies to the tune of $40 million. So what’s the next logical step? Do not, under any circumstances, make a sequel to Predator: Badlands.
To be clear, they should make another Predator movie. Specifically, director Dan Trachtenberg has been teasing for a while that, after releasing the surprise hit Prey, he had three more ideas.
“After Prey came out, and I started thinking about sequel stuff, there were three ideas that I had,” Trachtenberg explained to SFX Magazine, via Collider. “[Predator: Killer of Killers] is one, Badlands is two. And the third one is something else. The reason why I felt possessed to make them and sort of why I rushed – I did two at once because I could do, I could multitask with animation – was because I was so eager to get to the third thing.”
Whatever that third thing is, speculation has run high on the internet since the release of Badlands that – spoilers past this point – it’s some sort of Avengers: Endgame but for the Predator universe. And that’s a reasonable fan theory from a certain perspective. Prey ended with a credits tease that a group of Yautja (the alien name for the Predators) were coming for Naru (Amber Midthunder) and her tribe. The animated movie Killer of Killers ended with several teases, including two of our main characters on the run from the Predators on Yautja Prime, the Predator home world, and then the reveal of Naru, Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from the first Predator, and Harrigan (Danny Glover) from Predator 2, all held in cryostasis for future hunts. And Badlands ends with runt Predator Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) victorious in battle against his father, only for his new clan, including synth Thia (Elle Fanning) and friendly monster Bud (Rohinal Nayaran) surprised by the approach of Dek’s likely more vicious mother.
With all these characters on Yautja Prime (though unconfirmed if Killer of Killers ends in the same part of the timeline as Badlands), it’s logical to think we’ll get all the good guys teaming up against all the bad guys in a battle royale for the fate of the planet.
…But isn’t that the most boring option? What has been so refreshing about the three films Trachtenberg has made in the franchise so far is that not only are they unlike each other, they’re also not aping the formula of previous Predator movies. Prey, per the title, flipped the script to have Naru hunting the Predator, and thrust the action back in time to 1719. Killer of Killers masqueraded as an animated anthology, but was secretly one big story revealing new bits of the mythology we had never seen before. And Badlands introduces a Yautja protagonist for the first time, as well as functioning as a very funny buddy comedy thanks to the goofy/cheery Thia. More than any of those plot points, though, what has worked about this loose trilogy is that they are grounded in the emotional arcs of the characters first and foremost, and are action sci-fi movies, second.
Could Trachtenberg and company come up with an emotionally engaging, dynamic movie featuring all the characters mashed together? Sure. But we’ve seen that before in Endgame, and other crossovers. Heck, Marvel Comics is running a series right now called Predator Kills The Marvel Universe, if you’re really hankering for literally Predator: Endgame. Each entry in Trachtenberg’s section of the series thus far has been something different, something fresh and new, and merely taking characters we know and introducing them to each other is neither fresh nor new; quite the opposite… We’ve seen a group of merciless badasses hunted and hunting Yautja through multiple movies already. Even if we’ve met them before, seeing those folks again is simply adding a new coat of paint to the formula, not innovating.
While it would be fun to find out what Dek’s mom is like, that’s more a stinger, a final beat on the movie, versus a cliffhanger… We got our emotional resolution, the movie is a rousing success, and there’s no real need to say more about this unlikely trio. Again: they could. But 20th Century Studios greenlighting Predator: Badlands 2 – Here Comes Mommy or whatever is nowhere near as intriguing as whatever secret Trachtenberg has up his sleeves.
Either of these options also seems to be contradictory to what Trachtenberg has said in previous interviews. While discussing using Weyland-Yutani, a corporation from the Alien franchise, in Badlands with MSN, Trachtenberg noted that, “I know for me, I’ve enjoyed, if ever there to be the universe being connected or whatever, that it’s not like we’re grabbing our action figures and we’re just smushing them together, you know? That it can be handled a little bit more elegantly.”
In Badlands, the elements he picks from Alien – synths, a corporation trying to harvest alien species for weapons, and other visual bits and Easter eggs – are all there to serve the journeys of Dek and Thia, not merely thrill the audience with “hey, I recognize that.” Like the director notes: elegant. Similarly, on the same subject, Trachtenberg talked to GamesRadar, adding, “If all of it is new to you, you don’t need to have done any homework. It could just be a rad movie that makes sense on its own.”
There is nothing more homework-driven, more “grabbing the action figures,” than a movie involving six or more characters from five different movies. The concern is that 20th Century and Disney execs will likely be seeing dollar signs in their eyes now that Badlands has done so well, and want more of the same. Yet what is working about Predator in a way that hasn’t since the original movie hit cinemas in 1987 is that you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get each time you sit down to watch a film in the series, be it in theaters or streaming. Prey, Killer of Killers, and Badlands each stand on their own, an exciting entry point that works for new viewers and old without any prior knowledge of a Predator movie necessary.
Like the Yautja, the series needs to keep hunting for newer, bigger prey, ideas that will challenge the limits of what a Predator movie can do. More Dek, more Naru, more Dutch or Harrigan would certainly provide thrills and juice the box office to the “biggest Predator opening ever” that the success of Badlands now demands. But it’s not going to keep the franchise going for another four decades. It’s an endgame, when what we have now is an exciting, new beginning.
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